DARPA Kick-Starts Flying Car Program

coondoggie writes to share that DARPA is finally trying to make good on the promise of flying cars for our future with the new "Transformer" (TX) project. "DARPA said the vehicle will need to be able to drive on prepared surface and light off-road conditions, as well as support Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) features. The TX will also support range and speed efficiencies that will allow for missions to be performed on a single tank of fuel. DARPA said the TX will 'provide the flexibility to adapt to traditional and asymmetric threats by providing the operator unimpeded movement over difficult terrain. In addition, transportation is no longer restricted to trafficable terrain that tends to makes movement predictable.'"

Re:Ground vs Air

[Trepidity]

In most countries you already do need some sort of permission, don't you? An exception is if you're flying at relatively low altitudes over your own property, since in some countries airspace below a certain level is considered to be part of the ownership of the property. But if you're flying at even sort-of-high altitudes, you have to be a licensed pilot. And if you're flying at low altitudes over another person's property without permission, you're violating their property rights.

Another exception in the U.S. seems to be very light aircraft (I believe under 155 lbs), under the theory that in any crash you're not very likely to harm anyone but yourself. If a flying car weighed anything like a normal car, though, it wouldn't come close to meeting that threshhold (a Honda Civic is over 2500 lbs).

You could've said the same about the internet.

[Trerro]

Arpanet was slow, incredibly laggy, incapable of supporting a huge userbase, and as a result, impractical except in limited military and large-scale academic applications. It was largely ignored by the general public, and was of little value to society at large. It became the internet.

The original GPS system was horrifically expensive, and had a large enough margin of error that it was mainly used for coordinating naval fleets, where being a few hundred feet off course generally wasn't an issue in the middle of an ocean. You can now buy a fairly cheap device that both visually and verbally directs you through cities, usually with a margin of error of no more than 3 meters.

Note that in both cases, it only took about 20 years to go from an expensive, limited technology that the military had limited use for and civilians had none at all, to a common technology that no one thinks twice about using. So yes... the original flying car is going to be slow, terribly inefficient, and useless except in battlefields that it fits perfectly... but give it a decade or two, and you just may be driving one.

Also, keep in mind that even if taking off burns a huge amount of fuel, and your air MPG is not better than your ground MPG, the fact that you can aim in a straight line to your destination instead of following roads is going to save fuel on anything but very short trips... and you can still drive for those.

Re:What do they know?

[smellsofbikes]

No kidding. The KR2 [fly-kr.com] can do 180 mph at 50 miles per gallon. Of course, it does this by having the internal volume of a refrigerator rather than a bathroom, like most SUV's.

The ADI Stallion homebuilt [aircraftdesigns.com] is more efficient than a 747, as regards fuel spent per person carried, and if you're willing to only carry 2 people rather than 6, you can take along a motorcycle as well, at 230mph, while still using less gas than many larger SUV's.

However, for the VTOL demands, maybe they should consider an autogyro with a prerotator like the Carter Copter [wikipedia.org] or several others, that can manage vertical takeoff and landing (and has the happy side-effect that it flies the same after an engine failure as before, except its climbing capability is severely limited.)

Re:"kick-starts flying car"?

[smellsofbikes]

You kid, but Barnaby Wainfan's unique Facetmobile [wikipedia.org] aircraft originally had a pull-start motor that could only be started from the outside of the aircraft, which made life complicated. For that matter, most older aircraft, pre-1950, didn't have starters at all, and were started by hand-pulling the propeller hard enough to get the engine to fire [pipercubforum.com]. As you can imagine, this injured and killed a lot of people -- a lot more people killed than crank-starting cars -- and ended up with a fairly large number of aircraft flying off with no pilot. Some of them managed to fly hundreds of miles this way, in fact.

Re:What do they know?

[A nonymous Coward]

No, if you set the right clickees in preferences, mods take effect as soon as you slide off the mod menu.

Re:What do they know?

[Cassius Corodes]

I sometimes find I select something - and the drop-down box is still selected as I try to scroll down with my mouse wheel - which scrolls the drop down box instead of the screen. I don't always notice that that is what happened until I have confirmed it.